


leave me the wolf

by greymahariel (acceptnosubstitutes)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Paradox, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/greymahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inquisitor Lavellan is many things, chief among them compassionate. In a time of such crisis, Blackwall sees it as a weakness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave me the wolf

**Author's Note:**

> A slight rewrite of part of Blackwall's second personal quest, this particular scene I found lacking and very frustrating in the game.
> 
> Spoilers for that quest, obviously, but not much else.

Josephine looks down at her clipboard. She sighs, and looks up somewhere other than Lavellan’s face.

“Today, I present Blackwall, who stands on charges of...well, you are aware, Inquisitor. Let’s just get this over with.”

She steps back and out of the way, melting into the shadows beside the throne, but not leaving the room. She won’t look at Blackwall, either.

Cullen certainly doesn’t have that problem. If the man were a mage, the heat of his ire burning the back of Blackwall’s neck would find itself most literal. No doubt.

And Leliana is nowhere in sight but he knows she’s near. She’s a good archer, and practiced beside some of the best not at training, but in war.

Including Warden Mahariel, or Commander, if he still lived. 

Of all the people to fail, it’s the imagined image of a dead elf that keeps Blackwall from testing the strength of his binding. The Inquisition won’t be sloppy just because he used to fight alongside them, but he has had experience fighting with bound hands.

All he’d need is to get close enough to Cullen.

Blackwall closes his eyes briefly, then focuses them on Lavellan.

“This is...difficult,” the Inquisitor admits, “I wish this were under better circumstances.”

Another thing to regret. He says as much.

“Why didn’t you leave me in my cell?” The one question he’s dying, as gallows humorous that is, to hear an answer. “I was fully prepared to die!”

If Lavellan has a weakness more likely to cost him the fragile peace he’s slowly building, it’s his compassion. Friendship goes a long way with the elf, and Blackwall had liked to think that included him.

He’s not sure he can bear it if compassion won out.

“You lied to me,” Lavellan says, shortly, “deceived the Inquisition, passed yourself off as a fraudulent Warden, and ran when you learned of Mornay’s impending execution.”

Any one of those crimes are excuse enough for a death sentence, except perhaps the first. But it stings, to be recognized, and Blackwall wonders if Cullen or Leliana advised him to start with that one first. 

Maybe Josephine.

Still, he puts the most emphasis on the fact Blackwall abruptly left his station at news of Mornay. It would seem silly, juvenile even, to focus on that fact when murder also accompanies, but then Blackwall pretended to be a _Warden_. 

In peace, vigilance.

“Your choice, Rainer, does not matter here.” 

Ah, stripping away even the name. Blackwall would have already in his own mind, had he not come to think of any other identity as foreign, and alien.

It speaks of Leliana’s subtle hand.

“Then the Inquisition is corrupt,” Blackwall says, heat rising in his voice. “It will get out!”

He knows it’s true. There are traitors, double agents, infiltrators planting weeds among the flowers. 

“Let it,” Lavellan tells him emotionlessly.

Cullen, then. A fine commander if he didn’t let his emotions get the best of him. But he was too confident in the structure of the organization he served.

With an attitude like that, one day he would anger someone strong enough to strike back and win. It need not end in combat.

In war, victory.

Victory meant a great many things. So did war.

Lavellan shifts in his seat, and draws Blackwall’s attention. One leg crossed over the other, sitting lopsided close to horizontal, his chin in his palm supported by accompanying elbow on the side arm of the throne.

It’s a pose that doesn’t fit with the setting. Discordant. Whether it reduces or increases the importance, Blackwall cannot say.

“You have your freedom.”

Four words. It cannot be as simple as that, and he turns his eyes to the heavens.

“You will live to atone for your crimes, not as you were, but the man you are today. Have become.”

Lavellan hands the judgment down with a soft voice, yet it feels as heavy as an anchor over Blackwall’s shoulder. Had the Inquisitor’s trademark, unique yellow eyes ever seemed before as they did then?

Like a wolf.

Cullen remains silent, stiff as a statue.

Lavellan speaks up just as the soldier to Blackwall’s left cuts his hands free.

“When I first met you, I respected you on sight. Now, you want to die to ‘atone’ for your sins? I don’t think I’ve respected you less. Find another way.”

Blackwall inclines his head, muscle memory leading him out the door and through the long hallway, outside Josephine’s office.

“Blackwall,” Josephine says, and he stops. Does her the respect of turning around and looking her straight in the face.

“Do not mistake compassion for weakness. It can be hard. Strong. And unyielding.”

Josephine turns away, the heels of her boots slowly clicking against brick on her way back to her office.

In death, sacrifice.

Denied another act of cowardice by his own means. Forced to find, alive, a way to repay debts that endure beyond Blackwall’s grasp.

His vision of Lavellan too, as a pup barely outgrown adolescence, guided by hands not his own.

Life is not a punishment. It is a gift. It is compassion.

Heralded by the arrow that flies through Blackwall’s window that night and makes a hard impact into wood three inches away from his head.

And it is merciless.


End file.
